If Mitt Romney segues from a state governor with some experience in health care implementation to a Federalist warrior bent on restoring state’s rights, and implementing the Federalism Amendment, he’s got my support.

I’ve seen a number of conservatives on Twitter who are ready to to toss Romney off the Republican bus based almost solely on his state’s health care plan. I think that’s a terrible idea. As Smitty notes, letting states experiment with things like health care is exactly what we should be doing. We can see what works and what doesn’t (and, guess what? State-run health care doesn’t work. Surprise!) and other state governments can use those experiments to inform their own decisions. That’s how federalism works.

I can understand how conservatives would look askance at Romney for supporting his state’s government-run health care plan. I wasn’t a big fan when I heard of it and it’s turning out pretty much the way I expected it would. However, I don’t see where the state has been seriously injured by it at this point (at least not to the point where it can’t recover fairly quickly) and we’ve learned quite a few things from his experience. I don’t hold a state experiment against him when I have no real evidence that he wants to take that experiment nationwide today.

If he comes out of his experience with state-run health care wiser and with a strong dedication to federalism, then he’ll be a formidable candidate in 2012. If not, then I’ll line up against him. But I’m not willing to make that call yet. I’m inclined to give him some room to think.

He seems a smart guy and I, as a conservative and a voter, need to give him the room he needs to bring those smarts to bear. I guess we’ll see how well he does that over the next couple of years.

Romney won't get the nominee in 2012. He is not conservative. His health care plan is just like Obama's. That why I don't want to see him run for President in 2012. If he does get the nominee, Romney won't get my vote and I am going to stay at home on Election Day.

1) How do you know his plan is like Obama's since we haven't actually seen Obama's plan? 2) Why would you discourage local politicians (like, say, Governors) from experimenting in their own states so long as they learn from their experiments?

I'm pretty much with anonymous on this. For Mitt to change my mind, he'd have to come out with an honest statement that he felt the legislature was going to override his veto, so he proposed the best alternative he could*, that it was apparent that even his best alternative was unsuccessful and if he had it to do over, he'd let them override his veto and take the whole brunt of the failure.

*I think I've heard that this is the case, but honestly, I don't know that it is. If it was the inspiration of Romney himself, I wouldn't vote for him. I'd rather have an honest Democrat that we all know and trust to do the wrong thing (in our opinion) than a Republican who _says_ he'll do the right thing, and then doesn't. This is the problem I had with Bush, aside from the Iraq war. A "Compassionate Conservative", imo, is nothing more than a Democrat with strong defense instincts – you know…like a Democrat from about 60 years ago.